I wake each morning and turn on the news and hear nothing but Palestine, Palestine, Palestine. Terror, starvation, fear and bombs raining down on innocent women, men and children. I understand the need for revenge for the crimes committed by Hamas on innocent Israelis, but what I can’t get my head around, is the vengence metted out on innocent civilians including children. The Israeli government are commiting war crimes, murdering innocent Palestinians who have nothing to do with Hamas. It reminds me of a time when every Irish person was demonised in the UK where the media tarnished us all as IRA terrorists.

I want to weep when I hear the news each morning, it seems like a hopeless situation and I feel helpless. I went for a walk today and listened to a podcast where Rory Stuart reminded me of a Seamus Heaney poem that deals with hoplessness, I thought it was worth it to reproduce it for you:

From The Cure at Troy by Seamus Heaney

“Human beings suffer,
They torture one another,
They get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
Can fully right a wrong
Inflicted and endured

History says, don’t hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that further shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracle
And cures and healing wells.

Call miracle self-healing:
The utter, self-revealing
Double-take of feeling.
If there’s fire on the mountain
Or lightning and storm
And a god speaks from the sky

That means someone is hearing
The outcry and the birth-cry
of new life at its term.”